Ha'penny (11 page)

“Will you go back to Spain now?” Carmichael asked, looking up again.

“I? Spain?” For a moment she looked almost afraid, perhaps realizing how empty her future was without Lauria Gilmore. Then she smiled. “No. I will look for work here. I like London too much.”

“Do you have any idea why Miss Gilmore might have been killed?”

She shook her head. “None. I was shocked when I saw it in the
Standard
. Why would anyone bomb Lauria? She was kind and good.”

“Did she ever talk to you about bombs?” Carmichael asked, though it was a long shot.

Mercedes looked puzzled. “You mean the Blitz? Yes, sometimes, stories about the war. She worked in a canteen.”

“What were her political views?”

“She hated Mr. Normanby.” Mercedes smiled again. “How she would go on about how she hated him. She hated Hitler in Germany too, and Franco in Spain, Stalin in Russia, and all the others. She liked democracy, voting, that’s why she got me my papers, so I could vote. She liked little people, underdogs she called them. She liked Mr. Bevan, very much, and Mr. Atterly.”

“Atterly?” Carmichael asked.

“Attlee, she means, sir,” Royston said, looking up from his notebook. “I’ve written down Attlee.” Attlee, the leader of the Labour Party, the Official Opposition, a colorless man who Churchill had once described as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing.”

“Atterly, yes,” Mercedes confirmed, smiling at Royston.

“Did she know them personally?”

“She had met, yes, at parties, you know how it is, theater people, political people meet sometimes. She had to sit at dinner once next to the one who was killed, Thirkie, she told me about it after. She said he was the best of a bad lot.” Carmichael could hear the echo of the mistress saying it in her maid’s voice.

“So, yesterday,” Carmichael said. “Was Saturday usually your day off?”

“Not usually, but if I want a day, Lauria usually lets me change, unless she needs me particularly.”

“And did you especially want to be off yesterday?” Carmichael asked.

“Yesterday, yes, because I was meeting someone.” She looked down coquettishly. “My friend was free Friday and Saturday, and I asked Lauria if I could change and have one of those days, and she said yes, she didn’t need me after Friday morning. She had an appointment for lunch on Friday, with Antony at the Venezia, which meant a part.”

“Antony who?” Carmichael asked.

Mercedes opened her big eyes wide. “Antony Bannon, the famous director,” she said.

Jacobson sighed, clearly recognizing the name. “Did he offer her a part?” he asked.

Mercedes looked over at him. “I don’t know. I didn’t see her afterwards. She said after I dressed her for lunch on Friday, she didn’t need me until Saturday evening. She had tickets for Glenn Miller at the Albert Hall.”

GM, 8
P.M
., Carmichael thought. “So you dressed her for her lunch, and then went off, and came back last night in time to dress her for Glenn Miller?”

“Yes, but by then she was dead and wouldn’t need dressing again,” Mercedes said.

“So you didn’t see her yesterday at all?”

“No. The last time I saw her was on Friday morning. She got a taxi to Covent Garden, and I said, ‘Break a leg,’ meaning to wish her luck getting the part, you know. And she said, ‘Give my love to Gregory.’ Gregory being my friend I was seeing. And that’s the last time I ever saw her alive.” Mercedes wiped a tear from her eye with a little lace handkerchief.

“Did you know the Greens had yesterday off?” Carmichael asked.

“Yes, they always had Saturday. In the winter, Friday evening to Saturday, in the summer, all day Saturday. The Sabbath, you know? Mrs. Green always left cold food for me and Lauria, if she was eating in.”

“Do you know what they do?”

“They go to the synagogue, which is like church for them, and then they go to the house of a friend and do nothing. They really do nothing, they are obliged to, Mrs. Green told me. They can read, or talk, but they can do no work. Isn’t that amazing?” Mercedes’s expression showed that she clearly thought it little short of miraculous.

“How long had they been with Miss Gilmore?” Carmichael asked.

“Years and years. Since just after the war, I think. Mrs. Green was English; Jewish, but English. Mr. Green came from Holland when they threw away their Jews.”

“Threw out, not threw away,” Carmichael corrected her gently. “Were they and Miss Gilmore close?”

Mercedes stopped to consider. “In some ways close, in others not. She and I were more like friends, where with them they were always servants. But she treated me like a child to be indulged, whereas she took them much more seriously. She had been good to them too. She had helped Mr. Green with papers, as she did with me. Mrs. Green always says she didn’t know where she’d be without Lauria, and that she’d do anything for her. So I suppose they were close, yes.”

“Do you know where they might be now? Mrs. Channing wouldn’t let them stay here, you know.”

“That was very strange. At first, she didn’t mind, then afterwards she made a great fuss, shouting and raving.”

Carmichael could imagine. And all faked. “Did they say where they were going?”

“Not to me. But I suppose they would stay with friends,” Mercedes said. “Probably their friends from the synagogue.”

“Do you know their name?”

“I know some of their names. It wasn’t always the same family they visited. They had a lot of friends.”

Royston took down the names, while Carmichael drew Jacobson over to the window. “Can you find out where these people live from the synagogue?” he asked. “Or from the station?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Jacobson said. “But if the Greens have anything to hide, they won’t be there.”

Carmichael looked at Jacobson, wondering if he could be trusted. “Does Mrs. Channing know you know her husband was a Jew?” he asked.

“If there’s an International Jewish Conspiracy, they threw me out years ago for not paying dues,” Jacobson said. “She knows. And she must therefore have expected me to back her up. I’d never do such a thing. I’m Jewish, certainly, but I never let that get in the way of doing my job.”

9

M
alcolm kept piling me up with information about the terrible conditions in the Reich and I kept saying it was none of our business. If there was one thing the Farthing Peace had settled once and for all it was that the Continent was its own lookout. Why should I care what Hitler—or Pip for that matter—was doing to the Jews of Europe, even if I believed it? In fact, as I’d said to Siddy, I knew it was vastly exaggerated.

At last he shook his head and looked at me. “Your upbringing was eccentric, to say the least, and I always felt sorry for you Larkin girls.”

I drew myself up, not about to take that kind of thing.

“No, listen,” he said, and because he was Malcolm and Uncle Phil’s companion and I’d always known him, I did listen. “If you’d been an ordinary family your parents would have been up in court for neglect, the way they let you grow wild. You’ve tried hard since to be something real, in the theater, I respect that. But your roots are in shallow soil, like all of your sisters. There’s no use saying you’ll always be a Larkin, as Phil does. I’m asking you not to be a Larkin but for once to be a decent human being and do the decent thing. We’re on a slippery slope. We’re well on down it. This could be the last chance for democracy, for liberty.”

“You’re asking me to destroy the only thing that really matters to me, for something that isn’t even real,” I said. “I have my life, and my life has nothing to do with my duty to the country, to the Larkins, and certainly not to Humanity. My life is about theater. It always has been. What you want me to do, I see quite clearly now, is wreck a play, one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, to kill two politicians, who are probably only the tips of icebergs and can easily be replaced by others just as bad.”

Seen in this light, the light of ages, the light of Art, I felt my position was unassailable. Malcolm’s arguments certainly couldn’t touch me.

He sighed, and gave me his hand to help me up.

When we came back out into the garden, everyone was sitting on the terrace as they had been before lunch. Malcolm looked over at Uncle Phil and gave a little shake of his head. Uncle Phil stared out over the roses. Siddy was gulping a cocktail, and smoking. She ignored me. She didn’t even look up. I suppressed the feeling that she was in trouble and needed me. I was furious with her. Ginns, indeed. What she needed me for, after all these years, was to die for her, putting a bomb in a box in the theater. There wouldn’t have been a dry eye in the house when they hanged me.

“I think I’ll head back to London now,” I said, as brightly as I could manage.

Loy began to rise from his chair. Devlin, beside him, put a hand on his leg, stopping him. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“Are you sure?” Loy asked, raising his eyebrows. “I thought—”

“You had the privilege of driving Miss Lark from the station this morning. Let me take care of this,” Devlin said. He smiled at me. I smiled back. I liked the fact that he called me Lark, instead of Larkin. Loy tossed him the keys.

Uncle Phil and Malcolm shook my hand formally, a change from the hugs of this morning. Lieutenant Nash shook my hand too, but didn’t meet my eyes. Loy bowed over my hand, sardonic as ever. Siddy didn’t get up, she kept drawing on her cigarette and staring out over the ha-ha. “Good-bye then, Sid,” I said, as I went around the side of the house with Uncle Phil and Devlin.

“She’s taking it hard,” Devlin said.

“Go carefully,” Uncle Phil said.

“I’m sorry, Uncle Phil,” I said. “But you can rely on my silence.” He pressed my hand. I got into the car.

Devlin drove the car much more carefully than Loy. When we got to the end of the drive, he turned in the opposite direction. “I thought I’d take you to Maidstone,” he said, as I began to protest. “You’ll have a better choice of faster trains from there, than from Eskridge at this time on a Sunday.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We didn’t talk for a while. Devlin’s big hands were confident on the wheel as he motored through the country lanes along the Downs. I saw wild roses in the hedgerows, much prettier than Uncle Phil’s rosebushes, but on the whole I prefer my flowers made up as bouquets. We were held up behind a tractor going around a sharp corner, and then overtook it and went up a hill. Devlin pulled into a lay-by at the top of the rise, with Kent spreading out below us in a patchwork of greens. He switched the engine off, and it was very quiet. I could hear birds singing and the tractor laboring up the hill behind us.

“Why are you stopping?” I asked.

“We’re stopping because I can tell you’re a lovely girl really, and I want to talk to you.” He turned in his seat and smiled at me.

I jumped to the obvious conclusion. “Oh honestly,” I said, exasperated. “I’d expect that sort of nonsense from Loy, but not from you.”

“This isn’t what you’d have got from Loy,” he said, looking entirely sober now. “No, I reckon with Loy, you’d have got a much closer look at that corner back there than you’d have wanted, and probably ended up with your neck broken. That’s why I offered to drive you.”

I didn’t quite know how to react to his slow voice saying this. “You mean Loy doesn’t drive safely?” I asked, though I had already understood. I was horrified to find my voice shaking.

“He drives very well. Loy’s a professional, and so am I. Your uncle Phil now, he’s a nice man, a good man. He trusts you, and so does little Siddy. He tried to persuade you to help us out of your patriotic duty. And Malcolm, he tried to persuade you with facts and figures, and they’re all real enough, no doubt. And young Nash, if he’d had a go, he’d have tried with sob stories, and Lord knows there are enough sob stories. They’re good people, all of them. The best kind of English people. The kind of people you’d want running a country. Loy and I, we’re not nice people.”

Not English either, though he didn’t have to say so, his voice made the point. I reached for the handle of the car door. Devlin put his hand on my arm. I didn’t struggle, but I could tell by the feel of his hand how strong he was. Oddly, perversely, there was an almost erotic charge in the warmth of his hand and the strength of it. “Let me go!” I said.

“Let you go where, off into the farm country?” Devlin asked, quite gently. “Listen to me, Viola. We need you. I’m not threatening you, no, I’m not. Now I could, because we really can’t afford to let you go, knowing what you know and maybe being afraid, like your uncle says. But you know names and place and time, and that’s too much for you to know and for us to count on your word as a Larkin. I wouldn’t think your word as a Larkin would count for all that much, not when you’ve changed your name and all.”

“You have no idea how much my word counts, you animal!” I said. His hand was still holding my arm, not squeezing or hurting me, but holding on to me so I couldn’t jump out of the car. He was right that there was nowhere to go. We were on top of the rise and there was nothing within running distance but fields, rolling away. All the farm buildings seemed far away and entirely out of reach.

“No, that’s fair,” he said. “I don’t know. And I don’t think Siddy or Lord Scott really can know either. Loy wouldn’t be prepared to take the risk of letting you walk around knowing as much about us as you know, and I’m not sure he’s wrong. But I thought I’d take a chance that I could persuade you to help, if that was the choice.”

“Dead blowing up tyrants or dead in a ditch?” I asked, sarcastically.

“That’s about the weight of it,” he said.

Poor Antony would think his
Hamlet
was doomed if I died before rehearsal as well as Lauria. The thought gave me strength. “You don’t dare,” I said. “It’ll draw too much attention to the production. Maybe Antony won’t even put it on if I’m killed. It would be clear it was jinxed. He’s very superstitious. You wouldn’t be able to kill Hitler if there’s no
Hamlet
to kill him in.”

“He’ll still be going to the Wagner. That’s more dangerous, but it’s the fall-back plan. Loy wanted to go for that as soon as he heard. But Siddy thought it was fate, you being cast as Hamlet. She wanted to get in touch with you as soon as Lauria told her Antony was going to ask you.”